The Black Knight Satellite

For April, Stone Soldiers.info is celebrating the A to Z Blog Challenge with daily letter-themed entries. A separate page with a list of all these entries, plus Character Profiles and Book Synopses will appear on the right hand side of the page in coming weeks, detailing the people, places and things of the Stone Soldiers universe.

BOOK OF STONE: Black Knight Satellite

(A Stone Soldiers Encyclopedia Entry)

Among conspiracy followers and UFO enthusiasts, the Black Knight is an enigmatic object hanging over our planet, ignored by official agencies and having a variety of possible explanations for its origins.

Discovered during the heady days of the space race, the Black Knight appeared to be a large, artificial object in a polar orbit, in place before the U.S. or U.S.S.R. had begun launching their own artificial satellites. Even the San Francisco Examiner commented on the satellite's existence on May 14, 1954.

Amateur astronomers and conspiracy theorists continue to ponder the secret of the Black Knight over the next five decades, some claiming it to be an ancient, pre-historic construct while others claimed it to be of alien origin. 

However, in 2013, the Black Knight came down. 

Crashing near Salem, OK, the satellite, measuring nearly nine feet in diameter and thirty feet long, was covered in a crystalline black material, in which unknown symbols were etched over the entire surface. The satellite was quickly secured by the United States Air Force before a government contractor responded to the scene and the downed construct was concealed from any aerial view and examined. Within days, and after a reported attempt to steal the downed satellite, all traces of the Black Knight vanished from Oklahoma, with the government denying its existence.

Again, conspiracy theorists banded together, trying to formulate complicated explanations as to the Black Knight's existence.

But the truth was far more sinister.

An antediluvian vessel, the Black Knight had been launched into Earth's orbit millennia before, by the race known in legend as the Titans. Entombed within the satellite's interior, in a state of suspended animation, five Titans slumbered until their craft was returned to earth. Awakening, they immediately encountered the men and women of Detachment 1039. After a brief altercation that left at least one Titan dead, the remainder fled in the Black Knight to Greece, and Mount Olympus. There they hoped to activate transport to the fourth planet in the solar system, but were stopped by the Stone Soldiers.

In the aftermath, the Black Knight was moved to an undisclosed location where it and the ancient Fallen technology behind it are presumably being studied.